


Neverlove

by Kekune



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt, Feelings, Feels, Gore, Heavy Angst, Hurt, M/M, Sad, Stiles/Malia implied, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 21:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19876462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kekune/pseuds/Kekune
Summary: When the Nogitsune possesses Stiles, there's only one person who can save him: Derek Hale. However, Derek has to fight his own feelings first.





	Neverlove

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to 9Piecesof8 (my British partner in crime) for proofreading and mistake-hunting!  
> Another big thanks to Konran for reassuring me that this piece is not as cringy as I originally thought.

Neverlove

"When the Nogitsune gets the better of me, you have to kill me, Derek“, Stiles said. He was feeling the exhaustion as he managed to free himself out of possession for a very second. His eyes filled with a familiar sparkle, showing a hint of the sly humour that reminded Derek of Stiles’ usual sarcastic self.

His eyes were reflecting small rays of light shining from the light bulb above their heads. Eyes brown like dark chocolate and now without the pain Derek could see in them just a few moments ago.   
Stiles’ eyes were way too warm and soft for such a terrible situation, way too present for a body that wasn't his anymore. Derek could see the warmth in them that had always helped Stiles and his friends to manage even the worst of situations.   
But this time Stiles smiled for himself and only for himself, desperately trying to find pieces of self-awareness to hold onto. But after all it was just a mechanism to protect himself from losing everything that ever meant something to him, to shield himself from the corruption of possession that would certainly destroy him.

Derek looked at Stiles’ eyes again and again, eyes he loved so dearly, eyes he wanted to protect at all costs, never letting them go again.   
Ignoring his feelings however, he nodded slightly, giving his one and only a silent promise to fulfil his wishes, to hopefully save the real him. Even if death seemed to be the only possible solution, the inevitable outcome. 

Derek would have loved to give his own life instead of sacrificing the soul beside him.   
He was a bad person after all, he might even have deserved a fate like this. But Stiles: pure, soft, always happy Stiles, should have been save, save at home watching TV with his dad, out on the field with Scott or (he didn’t even dare to think about it) making out with Malia on the backseat of his jeep. Everything was better than having Stiles here with him, possessed and broken. 

"You’re the only one who can do it. Scott and Malia will not be able to end this", Stiles said.   
"Oh, Stiles", Derek thought. "Why do you think I'm the right person for this?" He didn’t speak the words out loud. Stopping himself from sobbing, he couldn’t show Stiles what he was going through. Stiles needed someone here with him who was ready for whatever outcome this situation might bring. Someone he could trust and Derek wanted to be this person for him when he needed him the most.

It was evening already and the white artificial light threw a silver shadow on everything it could find.   
Derek and Stiles were sitting next to each other on the ground waiting for the Nogitsune to take over. The high school was empty at this hour and they were completely alone.   
Every few minutes or so Stiles said something to show Derek he was still in control of his mind, still fighting against it. Not knowing that Derek was fighting a battle of his own.   
Thankfully the light was faint enough for Stiles to not see the desperation on Derek’s face.

"If you only knew…", Derek muttered softly to himself. His lips were moving, his mouth closed. He didn't have the strength to say the words out loud.   
He was aware of his feelings for Stiles for a long time now. Every time Derek started to like a person; his life turned into a nightmare.   
“Maybe…”, an evil voice in his mind said, “you’re not meant to fall in love.”   
Whenever Derek had felt an intense feeling of attraction, his life fell apart. He didn’t seem to deserve it and now Stiles had to suffer the consequences. 

Derek remembered Kate, her long blonde curls, her confident smile. That was the trait he had fallen in love with first. Derek had loved her unconditionally; he had loved her till the moment she killed his family in flames and betrayed him. He was still blaming himself for it, searching for a specific mistake he had made that had led her to destruction. Derek had let the enemy in, opening himself and his family to her who then had to pay the darkest price for his emotions, how ironic.   
That's what he wanted to spare himself from. Letting Stiles in would only make it worse. That's why he kept silent, why he didn't tell Stiles about his feelings for him because he wouldn’t be able to endure the consequences again. He wouldn't survive losing another person he loved. If Stiles wasn't his, he might even be able to save him.

Derek hadn’t the chance to start crying because Stiles transformed again. His face was turning dark with eyes looking so empty that every last bit of Stiles' mimic seemed to vanish instantly, transforming his expression into something colder than ice, something that wasn’t Stiles at all anymore. Malignity destroying the last hint of ease Stiles had been able to keep on his face for so long.   
Stiles was gone. 

Derek recognized it as soon as it began, and he was trying to get up as quickly as he could when the Nogitsune tried to attack him with a small pocket knife which Stiles had probably hidden in his pocket for self-defence purposes earlier that day. In a fleeting moment Derek would have loved to die, he imagined the creature throwing him to the floor, tearing into him, ripping his heart out into multiple pieces, shredding it.   
“No heart, no heartbreak. No heartbreak, no pain”, he thought to himself.   
It was not granted to him.

Instead of lingering on his thoughts much longer, he took Stiles' hands in this, freeing them from the weapon with sheer strength. From one monster to another. Stiles was trying to hold onto the weapon with inhuman strength, there was nothing left of the fragile teenage boy Derek got to know over the last few months.   
“I’m 145 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones, sarcasm is my only defence”, Derek remembered him once saying. Without his voice and his wits Stiles was defenceless in this, no one could outsmart a Nogitsune with willpower and sarcasm only, especially not while being possessed and trapped in his own body by said creature. Stiles would be unable to free himself.

Stiles’ hands were stiff but still remained warm, they felt exactly like the first time he had the chance to touch them. Derek’s treacherous heart would always remember that moment like it had been yesterday, burnt into his mind forever, setting off a nostalgic spark from the past, a faint glimmer so much needed in the dark hour he was suffering through right now.   
For a better lack of words he could only describe it as a fast-beating mess.

Back when the Kanima had paralyzed him and he had been so close to drowning in that goddamn school swimming pool, before bodily-weak, fragile Stiles Stilinski had turned himself into a hero just to rescue him. Derek couldn’t trust his eyes back then when someone was actually coming for him, and even less so, when this special someone turned out be Stiles. Very unexpectedly, he might add.  
Derek smiled gently, mentally bathing in memories from times long gone. He wouldn’t let go off Stiles’ fingers back then and he had blamed the Kanima’s paralyzing poison for it. None of the others ever found out about it, but he was still clinging onto Stiles’ hand long after the poison had already left his body.   
Stiles’ fingers had always seemed so fragile, this new strength didn't fit them. Derek didn’t like the change because he was aware of what would follow, and he was not ready for it.

Stiles' bones made a horrifying breaking sound when Derek forced his hand open to take the weapon inside it. Not a real weapon though, not even a sword, just a small pocket knife, and oh the irony, still worse than anything Derek could imagine. He pushed it into Stiles' chest, over and over again until his own sobs stopped him. Derek slid down the wall behind him, leaving blood marks on the wallpaper, now holding onto the body he attacked or “saved” from himself seconds ago. He held him too close, desperate, broken.   
A puppet, still warm, ready to rise again at any given moment.

The lights made the floor look red, making the wet spots look like puddles, puddles shining in dark ruby red.

"I'm so sorry...“, Derek whispered. It was the first time he apologized to someone.

But in this very moment Derek never wanted to be a powerless and weak minded coward again.   
“You didn’t break your promise”, the voice in his head said. “You owed him that.”  
Derek wanted the voice to shut up.

Stiles’ shirt was covered in blood but his eyes looked human-like again, hurt, lost in pain.  
The Nogitsune stopped its possession, ready to move on, ready to find a new host, a host able to live, to act, and to fulfil its commands. The little left of Stiles wasn’t worthy of its control anymore.   
Stiles was more dead than alive, more corpse than person.   
Derek let go of Stiles body slowly and kneeled down beside him, one hand softly resting on Stile's cheek. His eyes were open but his breath so very shallow.   
He was barely conscious when Derek kissed him.

"I'm so so sorry...", Derek repeated. He said it again and again, repeating it like a mantra that, so he hoped, could undo all of his actions.   
Derek wished he could turn back time, stopping himself from getting too close to Stiles in the first place, preventing Stiles' fate by staying as far away from him as possible. Keeping him save by cutting him out of his cursed life that was destroying everyone near him.

Derek turned around looking for help, someone had to call an emergency.   
Maybe Stiles could still be saved after what the Nogitsune did to him? After what he did to him. Maybe there was still enough life left in him? Stiles was a fighter.   
Derek saw Malia instead.

She gazed towards the body in horror, clasping her hands over her mouth, a shrieking sound escaping her lips.   
Derek got up instantly, risking one last look at Stiles.   
He would leave Stiles with her. He was not his Stiles anymore, he had never been his Stiles in the first place. He was Malia’s Stiles and that’s what he would be.

"Wait!“, she shouted while calling an ambulance on her mobile phone.   
Ignoring her, Derek ran faster, still feeling Stiles' lips on his own. Lips sealing their goodbyes. Derek wasn’t sure if he could ever forget them.


End file.
